The Mayan family of languages is ancient and unique. With their distinctive relational nouns, positionals, and complex grammatical voices, they are quite alien to English and have never been shown to ...
More

The Mayan family of languages is ancient and unique. With their distinctive relational nouns, positionals, and complex grammatical voices, they are quite alien to English and have never been shown to be genetically related to other New World tongues. These qualities, this book shows, afford a particular opportunity for linguistic insight. This book demonstrates the value of a close, granular analysis of a small language lineage for untangling the complexities of first language acquisition. The book applies the comparative method to three Mayan languages—K'iche', Mam, and Ch'ol—showing how differences in the use of verbs are connected to differences in the subject markers and pronouns used by children and adults. The author's holistic approach allows him to observe how small differences between the languages lead to significant differences in the structure of the children's lexicon and grammar, and to learn why that is so. More than this, the author expects that such careful scrutiny of related languages' variable solutions to specific problems will yield new insights into how children acquire complex grammars. Studying such an array of related languages, the author argues, is a necessary condition for understanding how any particular language is used; studying languages in isolation, comparing them only to one's native tongue, is merely collecting linguistic curiosities.Less

The Comparative Method of Language Acquisition Research

Clifton Pye

Published in print: 2017-11-10

The Mayan family of languages is ancient and unique. With their distinctive relational nouns, positionals, and complex grammatical voices, they are quite alien to English and have never been shown to be genetically related to other New World tongues. These qualities, this book shows, afford a particular opportunity for linguistic insight. This book demonstrates the value of a close, granular analysis of a small language lineage for untangling the complexities of first language acquisition. The book applies the comparative method to three Mayan languages—K'iche', Mam, and Ch'ol—showing how differences in the use of verbs are connected to differences in the subject markers and pronouns used by children and adults. The author's holistic approach allows him to observe how small differences between the languages lead to significant differences in the structure of the children's lexicon and grammar, and to learn why that is so. More than this, the author expects that such careful scrutiny of related languages' variable solutions to specific problems will yield new insights into how children acquire complex grammars. Studying such an array of related languages, the author argues, is a necessary condition for understanding how any particular language is used; studying languages in isolation, comparing them only to one's native tongue, is merely collecting linguistic curiosities.

Five Germanic languages--Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, and Faroese--along with two Finno-Ugric languages--Finnish and Sami--have lived in neighboring territory in the North for millennia. ...
More

Five Germanic languages--Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, and Faroese--along with two Finno-Ugric languages--Finnish and Sami--have lived in neighboring territory in the North for millennia. Though the first five languages belong to a different linguistic family than the second two, their long life together has influenced them all in sometimes surprising ways. This book investigates archaeological, cultural, and genetic evidence from deep history, beginning in the immediate post-Ice Age, to reveal where the languages and their speakers came from. The book's focus is on the crucial intersections, sometimes actually collisions, among the seven languages and their speakers. The conclusion reports on the languages of Scandinavia today and some linguistic trends that will likely affect their future.Less

The Languages of Scandinavia : Seven Sisters of the North

Ruth H. Sanders

Published in print: 2017-11-24

Five Germanic languages--Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, and Faroese--along with two Finno-Ugric languages--Finnish and Sami--have lived in neighboring territory in the North for millennia. Though the first five languages belong to a different linguistic family than the second two, their long life together has influenced them all in sometimes surprising ways. This book investigates archaeological, cultural, and genetic evidence from deep history, beginning in the immediate post-Ice Age, to reveal where the languages and their speakers came from. The book's focus is on the crucial intersections, sometimes actually collisions, among the seven languages and their speakers. The conclusion reports on the languages of Scandinavia today and some linguistic trends that will likely affect their future.

PRINTED FROM CHICAGO SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.chicago.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright University of Chicago Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in CHSO for personal use (for details see http://www.chicago.universitypressscholarship.com/page/privacy-policy).date: 14 August 2018